We always seek out forbidden things
and long for whatever is denied us.
--François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 1532-1564

Outside the tall bow windows of the Paris Opera ballet school, dusk
embraced the city in a grayish pink veil, settling around spires of
cathedrals and draping across bridges of the Seine. Inside the
cavernous rehearsal hall, Victorine Laurent's fellow students practiced
plies under the critical eye of their pudgy dance master, Monsieur
Jules. The violinist yawned as he scratched out a listless Chopin
nocturne. The girls'
middle-aged mothers nested on folding chairs, gossiping and clutching
tattered shawls against the evening chill.

In the bright vestibule, Victorine cupped her hands against the
glass-paned French doors and scanned the room for Edgar Degas. Was she
too late for their appointment? No, there he was in his sketching
corner, but not alone. Another gentleman stood with him off to the
side, observing the girls in the flickering gaslight. When Degas caught
sight of her, he nudged his
companion and nodded his chin toward her. Victorine smoothed her dark
curls. She tugged the
décolleté of her crimson taffeta frock just a touch lower, took a deep
breath, and threw open the double doors, slicing the room with a shaft
of light.

As she approached, Victorine's gaze riveted to the other gentleman.

Degas introduced her, and Victorine lowered her face in the charming
way she had practiced a thousand times in her cheval glass. Then she
glanced up at the stranger, held his gaze a moment longer than was
proper. The shine of a silk top hat, the sparkle of a gold watch chain,
and the polish of leather boots spoke to her of
affluence.

"So! This is the gentleman from Marseille you told me so much
about," she smiled sweetly, extending her hand.

There was a moment of confusion before Degas realized the mistaken
identity. "No, no, this isn't the banker chap. This is Edouard Manet!
He's an artist, Victorine. He wants you to model for him,"

She kept her smile, murmured it was a pleasure, then turned to walk
away. Edouard Manet grabbed her wrist. "Wait a moment. What's wrong
with artists? They can't afford to buy you a carriage and pair?"

So he understood where her priorities lay.

"I've never heard of you, Monsieur Manet. Have you exhibited in the
Salon?"

"He has," Degas said. "Just not very often."

The yearly Salon competition sponsored by the prestigious Académie française held the entire city of Paris enthralled. It was ostensibly
open to all artists, but everyone knew that the conservative jury was
notable for rejecting work deemed too iconoclastic.

"I'd wager you've never seen paintings like mine." Edouard scribbled
an address on the back of his calling card. "Come to the studio, judge
my work, then decide." He watched her face closely. "I pay my models
well."

A flicker of interest lit her eyes. "I'll consider it. But if I
agree to model for you, I insist Monsieur Degas be present as
chaperone."

She was taken aback by the poetry of his remark. "Do I possess
music?" Her tone turned soft.

"Perhaps."

Victorine pulled her thin wool mantelet closer around her shoulders
as she and Degas sipped
crèmes in the cool morning air. They chatted under the green canvas
awning of her
favorite café near the cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, in the
quartier where she and many young women of her social class lived. They
were called
lorettes -- not quite as debased as streetwalkers, not quite as
exalted as courtesans.

"After boarding school, Manet could have followed his father's
wishes and become a barrister or chosen a position in banking or the
stock exchange," Degas said. "But he has a
talent that will propel him higher." Degas sat back. "He has the hands
of an artist coupled with the passion of a revolutionary. With
paintbrush and canvas he's going to change the way the world's
perceived." Degas named obscure artists Victorine had never heard
of -- Monet, Renoir, and Cézanne -- who had chosen Edouard Manet as
their Apollo. "Of them all, Manet has the cool, analytical intelligence
to be a painter of his own time."

The next day at the scheduled hour, Victorine knocked at the black
lacquered door of Edouard Manet's flat. As footsteps approached inside,
she glanced down and noticed that her hem was splattered with the
reddish brown mud of Paris's
ubiquitous construction pits. And it was her best dress, the only one
made of silk satin. Her
side-laced ankle boots were caked with mud as well. Too late now to
regret walking to save six sous on omnibus fare.

The door swung open and Edouard bowed with an exaggerated flair.

Victorine paused under the shimmering gas jets of the foyer
chandelier to untie the lilac satin ribbons of her
cabriolet bonnet and placed it with her fringed parasol on the
marble-top bureau. She knew that even within the modest budget of a
lorette she looked as delectable as a candy box in a
confectionery shop; her luxuriant dark hair, swept back into a
sophisticated chignon, had taken her hairdresser painstaking time to
accomplish. The faux pearl and rhinestone earrings pulled the eye to
her expertly powdered and rouged face, pink and white as a Fragonard
galante, perfect in every feature. Except. Except for a cruel
oval scar below her left cheek, which marred the flawless surface.
Sensing Edouard
appreciatively scanning her from behind, she swayed a bit more
seduction into her hips, a cascade of lilac satin
ruffles sweeping the dusty floorboards with each step. As she
approached the
parlor, she glanced at the fine upholstered furnishings, the damask
drapes tied back with tasseled silk cords, the
gleaming mahogany end tables, and puzzled over the incongruity of these
treasures residing in an obscure young artist's studio in the seedy
Batignolles district.

In the parlor, she met Degas with a quick kiss to both cheeks while
two other gentlemen rose from the crimson velvet divan. The older,
distinguished-looking one was a Corinthian column of a man exuding a
powerful presence and intimidating demeanor. The other, a willowy chap
with vaguely feminine features, was shorter than Victorine and slight
of build. What a comical picture they created standing side by side.

Edouard introduced the younger man as André, the Marquis de
Montpellier. He adjusted his cravat and slicked back a stray lock of
fine, blond hair. The soft peach fuzz on his cheeks and the spray of
freckles across his nose hinted that he could be no more than her age,
seventeen, or eighteen at the most. She commented that her favorite
shopping street in Paris was the boulevard de Montpellier, no doubt
named for his illustrious ancestors? He replied that he was just a
humble writer, and could take no credit for his family's storied past.
Judging by his threadbare suit of clothes, Victorine surmised that the
family had moved out of the
ancestral chateau and into the caretaker's cottage several generations
ago.

The older gentleman waited patiently for his turn. Edouard
introduced him as Monsieur Baudelaire. She instantly
recognized the name of Charles Baudelaire, the poet and author,
esteemed as one of the greatest thinkers of the age.

"Monsieur Baudelaire, this is an honor. I'm a great admirer of your
work."

Not one to be as inveigled as the young marquis by flattery,
Baudelaire questioned her as to which, if any, of his "humble
scribblings" she had read?

She wanted him to know that she had a good education, wasn't some
vulgar cocotte from the streets.
"I loved an essay you published recently about women. I committed a
phrase to memory: 'Woman is a divinity, a star which presides over all
the conceptions of the brain of Man.'"

"Quite right, my essay in Le Figaro last week!" He seemed
impressed. He asked how Victorine had come to meet
Manet.

"I pressed Degas for an introduction after seeing her in one of his
pastel sketches," Edouard said.